Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

    The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

    Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
    2016-02-02
    368 pages
    6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
    Hardcover ISBN: 9780544387669
    eBook ISBN: 9780544386426
    Paperback ISBN: 9780544811805

    Michael Eric Dyson, Professor of Sociology
    Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

    Michael Eric Dyson explores the powerful, surprising way the politics of race have shaped Barack Obama’s identity and groundbreaking presidency. How has President Obama dealt publicly with race—as the national traumas of Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott have played out during his tenure? What can we learn from Obama’s major race speeches about his approach to racial conflict and the black criticism it provokes?

    Dyson explores whether Obama’s use of his own biracialism as a radiant symbol has been driven by the president’s desire to avoid a painful moral reckoning on race. And he sheds light on identity issues within the black power structure, telling the fascinating story of how Obama has spurned traditional black power brokers, significantly reducing their leverage.

    President Obama’s own voice—from an Oval Office interview granted to Dyson for this book—along with those of Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and Maxine Waters, among others, add unique depth to this profound tour of the nation’s first black presidency.

  • Mixed-Race Youth and Schooling: The Fifth Minority

    Mixed-Race Youth and Schooling: The Fifth Minority

    Routledge
    2016-02-26
    256 pages
    10 B/W Illus.
    Hardback ISBN: 978-1-13-802191-4
    Paperback ISBN: 978-1-13-802193-8

    Sandra Winn Tutwiler, Professor of Education
    Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas

    This timely, in-depth examination of the educational experiences and needs of mixed-race children (“the fifth minority”) focuses on the four contexts that primarily influence learning and development: the family, school, community, and society-at-large.

    The book provides foundational historical, social, political, and psychological information about mixed-race children and looks closely at their experiences in schools, their identity formation, and how schools can be made more supportive of their development and learning needs. Moving away from an essentialist discussion of mixed-race children, a wide variety of research is included. Life and schooling experiences of mixed-raced individuals are profiled throughout the text. Rather than pigeonholing children into a neat box of descriptions or providing ready made prescriptions for educators, Mixed-Race Youth and Schooling offers information and encourages teachers to critically reflect on how it is relevant to and helpful in their teaching/learning contexts.

    Table of Contents

    • Preface
    • Part I: Being Mixed-Race in Society
      • Chapter 1: The Context of Race for Mixed-Race People
      • Chapter 2: Mixed-Race People in Society Over Time
      • Chapter 3: Racial Identity: Multiple Perspectives on Racial Self-Understanding
    • Part II: Family, Community, and Peers
      • Chapter 4: Structures, Practices, and Socialization in Interracial and Multiracial Families
      • Chapter 5: Community, Social Class and Sociocultural Interactions
      • Chapter 6: Peer Relations and Friendship Formations
    • Part III: Education and Schooling: People, Places, and Practices
      • Chapter 7: Teachers’ (Mixed) Race Constructions and Teaching in Multiracial Classrooms
      • Chapter 8: The Racial Context of Schooling and Mixed-race Youth
      • Chapter 9: Schooling Supportive of Mixed-Race Youth
    • Index

  • Black Lives Matter Activist Says Obama Meeting Was Positive

    Black Lives Matter Activist Says Obama Meeting Was Positive

    TIME
    2016-02-18

    Maya Rhodan


    WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 18: U.S. President Barack Obama (C) speaks about race relations while flanked by Brittany Packnett (L), and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, February 18, 2016 in Washington, DC. President Obama met with African American faith and civil rights leaders before an event to celebrate Black History Month. Mark Wilson—Getty Images

    For over an hour on Thursday, 31-year-old activist and educator Brittany Packnett sat beside President Obama at a table in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a unique meeting of the minds.

    The nation’s first African American president convened a group of activists, both young and old, for a discussion on how he can spend his final year in office tackling issues that impact the black community—from criminal justice reform to police-community relations. Though one activist from Obama’s hometown of Chicago publicly slammed the meeting as a “photo opportunity and a 90-second sound bite for the president,” according to Packnett, the meeting was the complete opposite of that.

    “We had a conversation that lasted over 90 minutes,” Packnett tells TIME. “The president actually extended himself because he wanted to continue the conversation. We had a lot of opportunity to elevate various strategies that are happening on the ground as far as criminal justice reform, working on police violence, and systemic educational inequities.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Meet Team One Drop: Ben Affleck

    Meet Team One Drop: Ben Affleck

    Fanshen Cox
    2016-02-10

    One Drop of Love is a multimedia one-woman show exploring the intersections of race, class and gender – and in search of justice and love. The show is written and performed by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni.

    For more information, click here.

  • An Exploration of Racial Considerations in Partnered Fathers’ Involvement in Bringing Up Their Mixed-/Multi-Race Children in Britain and New Zealand

    An Exploration of Racial Considerations in Partnered Fathers’ Involvement in Bringing Up Their Mixed-/Multi-Race Children in Britain and New Zealand

    Fathering: A Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice about Men as Fathers
    Volume 13, Number 2 (2015)
    26 pages

    Rosalind Edwards, Professor of Sociology
    University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

    Chamion Caballero, Visiting Senior Fellow
    Department for Social Policy
    London School of Economics

    This article considers how partnered fathers’ involvement may be shaped by their understandings of the salience and impact of their children’s racial belonging where fathers do not share the same race as their (biological) children. We draw on findings from a small-scale study of fathers with a partner from a different racial background living in Britain and New Zealand, to consider their involvement with their mixed or multi-racial children. Bringing up mixed/multi-race children can involve white fathers in thinking about issues that they would not necessarily otherwise have to consider. It could, for example, mean that they supported their children’s access to minority cultural knowledge and challenge racism. Equally, bringing up mixed/multi-race children can involve fathers from racial minorities in thinking about racial considerations in different ways. Notably they may transmit racial pride and cultural history to help their children deal with prejudice from the father’s own minority ethnic group as well as racism from Whites.

    Read the entire document (in Microsoft Word format) here.

  • The Complexity of Immigrant Generations: Implications for Assessing the Socioeconomic Integration of Hispanics and Asians

    The Complexity of Immigrant Generations: Implications for Assessing the Socioeconomic Integration of Hispanics and Asians

    National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts
    Working Paper No. 21982
    February 2016
    58 pages
    DOI: 10.3386/w21982

    Brian Duncan, Professor of Economics
    University of Colorado

    Stephen J. Trejo, Professor of Economics
    University of Texas, Austin

    Because of data limitations, virtually all studies of the later-generation descendants of immigrants rely on subjective measures of ethnic self-identification rather than arguably more objective measures based on the countries of birth of the respondent and his ancestors. In this context, biases can arise from “ethnic attrition” (e.g., U.S.-born individuals who do not self-identify as Hispanic despite having ancestors who were immigrants from a Spanish-speaking country). Analyzing 2003-2013 data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), this study shows that such ethnic attrition is sizeable and selective for the second- and third-generation populations of key Hispanic and Asian national origin groups. In addition, the results indicate that ethnic attrition generates measurement biases that vary across groups in direction as well as magnitude, and that correcting for these biases is likely to raise the socioeconomic standing of the U.S.-born descendants of most Hispanic immigrants relative to their Asian counterparts.

    Read the entire paper here.

  • An inquiry on racial, ethnic, and national identity among ‘mixed race’ persons of Indian and Fijian descent

    An inquiry on racial, ethnic, and national identity among ‘mixed race’ persons of Indian and Fijian descent

    University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji
    February 2015
    149 pages
    DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.5141.7360

    Rolando Alonzo Cocom

    A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the partial requirements for the completion of Master of Arts in Sociology

    This explorative research provides an interpretive understanding of racial, ethnic, and national identity among ‘mixed race’ persons of Indian and Fijian descent in Suva, Fiji. This study was motivated by three research questions: (1) How do ‘mixed race’ Indian-Fijians identify themselves with an ethnic label or labels? (2) How do they identify with the term ‘Fijian’, given its recent institutionalization as a national identity construct? and (3) What do such experiences and views tell us about the racialization and politicization of identity in Fiji? Answers to these questions were interpreted from information generated during multiple individual and group interviews with ten ‘mixed race’ participants in Suva, who were accessed through the snowballing sampling method.

    The study contributes to the discourse of identity in Fiji by presenting for the first time the experiences and opinions of being a ‘mixed race’ Indian-Fijian in a social context where political events and social structures have demarcated a set of dichotomized in-group and out-group relations and practices. It also contributes to the field of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) and to contemporary political debates in light of the underrepresentation of literature from the South Pacific region; the limited literature on ‘mixed race’ in Fiji; and the recent state policy to classify all citizens with the term ‘Fijian’. Based on the interviews conducted, this research demonstrates how the participants reinforced, resisted, and accommodated the social structures and discursive practices of identity in Fiji.

    Read the entire thesis here.

  • Mixed marriages are changing the way we think about our race

    Mixed marriages are changing the way we think about our race

    The Washington Post
    2016-02-17

    Jeff Guo

    For all the talk about immigrants refusing to embrace American ways — a defining controversy of this GOP presidential race — the evidence has been scant.

    The National Academies of Sciences deflated most of the myths in a definitive report last year. Today’s immigrants are more educated and better English speakers than their predecessors, and they are far less likely to commit a crime compared to the native-born. They are quickly becoming part of American communities.

    In fact, new immigrants may be assimilating a lot faster than than we had ever thought. A new study this week from economists Brian Duncan, of the University of Colorado, and Stephen Trejo of University of Texas, Austin finds that the descendents of immigrants from Latin-American and Asian countries quickly cease to identify as Hispanic or Asian on government surveys.

    According to the authors, these are mostly children of interracial couples that aren’t writing down their diverse heritages. Mixed marriages are increasingly common in America — Pew finds that about 26 percent of Hispanics marry a non-Hispanic these days, and 28 percent of Asians marry a non-Asian. To accommodate this trend, government surveys now allow you to check multiple boxes for your race and ethnicity.

    But it turns out that many aren’t doing that…

    Read the entire article here.

  • No, Bill Clinton, we’re not ‘all mixed race’ – and you of all people should know that

    No, Bill Clinton, we’re not ‘all mixed race’ – and you of all people should know that

    The Independent
    London, United Kingdom
    2016-02-15

    Remi Joseph Salisbury

    If you’re claiming you’re ‘colour-blind’, you’re not being progressive. You’re part of the problem

    In a seemingly fear-fuelled attempt to halt the rapidly growing popularity of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton has once more turned to her husband – her “secret weapon” – to move along the discussion. Except it’s all gone terribly wrong.

    At a rally in Memphis on Friday, Bill Clinton demonstrated his ineptitude in offering any meaningful contribution to political debates about racial equality when he argued that “we are all mixed-race people”.

    This comment – an attempt to downplay the significance of race – represents a lack of respect towards, and disregard for, the lives of people of colour living in the United States.

    Bill Clinton has had a lot of opportunities to think about race. He might have thought about the centrality of race to prejudice in US society when his “tough on crime” stance saw him introduce the 1994 crime bill. When this bill supported a burgeoning prison-industrial complex that disproportionately incarcerates African Americans, often for non-violent and petty crimes, he might have stopped to think about race…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Valentine’s Day special! On love, race and history in Ghana

    Valentine’s Day special! On love, race and history in Ghana

    Africa is a Country
    2016-02-14

    Dan Magaziner, Associate Professor of History
    Yale University


    Despite colonial administrators’ attempts to sabotage their marriage plans, Brendan (a district commissioner) and Felicia Knight wed in 1945. Fifteen years later, Felicia staged a successful one-woman-protest in front of Flagstaff House to save her husband’s job during the Africanization of government service. On the grounds that he was married to a Ghanaian and raising their five children as Ghanaians, Kwame Nkrumah retained Brendan in government employ.

    A couple months ago I was fortunate to read Carina Ray’s excellent new book Crossing The Color Line: Race Sex and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana on the history on interracial intimacy on the Gold Coast. I decided to interview her for AIAC and when our conversation moved from political economy and racism to political economy, racism and love, we figured – Valentine’s Day! So here it is: an AIAC take on love, critical politics included.

    Why do you think that the history of interracial intimacy in the Gold Coast / Ghana important? What drew you to study it and to these stories in particular?

    Let me answer the second question first. When I started the archival work that culminated in Crossing the Color Line, my intention was to write an altogether different book about multiracial people in colonial and post-independence Ghana. Much has been written about them in the context of the precolonial period as cultural, social, political, and linguistic intermediaries—the ubiquitous “middle(wo)men” of the trans-Atlantic trade, especially as it became almost exclusively focused on the slave trade. Hardly anything, however, has been written about this group during the period of formal colonial rule in British West Africa. So I set out to do just that, but quickly discovered that while the archive had much to say about interracial sexual relations in the Gold Coast, there was relative silence about their progeny…

    Read the entire interview here.